Monthly Archives: March 2002

First, today is a snow day… Lots of idiots in their pretend four by fours sliding through intersections… If I hadn't been driving a car built using proper all wheel drive technology, I'd have gotten in a couple accidents (although I'm not really sure how much damage a Tracker can do to a brick like the TT).

That reminds me, I'm far enough along on it now that I can talk about it publicly… Those of you who've read my pages over the past years know about my company that built 355 replicas — I'd always fiddled with my parent's Beetle, and at about age eighteen I built my first prototype car. Not that either of these projects got anywhere, but I've started a new car company. It's aim is to market a full car that prices at under $3000 and gets 100 mpg. More later.

Now some bad news. William at Lazarus hasn't had any luck getting our drive back, even using the bits from the new drive… We've fallen through that 1% crack. He's sending me the complete report on the damage, when it gets here I'll share it… Otherwise I have to keep putting up with accusations that I just made the whole thing up…

This also means that the data in BME/risks is scrapped… So… I'm going to make a few changes in the software, and then I'll be writing a handful of the professionals that I know both on and off IAM to help. (It will be a small handful, so if a week passes and you don't hear from me, please don't be offended). I'll post more on this soon of course.

I'm sure a lot of you have seen this story already, but for those that have not, let me summarize. At a recent Bush speach (including telling kids at a school how important prayer is), a few blocks away at the perpetual protest that follows him there were a bunch of jokers with pretzels throwing them up in the air and pretending to choke on them, making fun of Bush. They were of course arrested. When asked what the charge was, the police chief told them, “attempted murder”.

Nice. Obviously they're going to get released from this bogus charge, but does making fun of the president really deserve an afternoon in the back of a truck with your arms behind your back, followed up by a night in prison?

A few other links:

Preparing for perpetual war – I understand why the office of disinformation and the shadow government are important. What boggles my mind is WHY was the public told about it? This article proposes the answer that it's because the US public is being prepped for a 1984-esque “perpetual war”. Scary notion.

As you know, the US is building a huge oil pipeline for the Alaskan reserve drilling. Now, all the geological evidence suggests that there is simply not that much oil in Alaska. Most of that oil deposit is in Northern Canada. Simple geological fact. So why does the US want to build a huge pipeline for oil they don't even have? There is only one logical answer: It is for Canada's oil.

Middle East relations are deteriorating. America is a resource-poor country and can not produce enough of it's own energy or water to supply itself. Thus they buy it from places like Saudi Arabia… But… If that falls apart, the pipeline is already in place to just take over that part of Canada and steal our oil. Given that now the US is pushing itself into a trade war with Europe over these steel tariffs, I really think it's getting more likely every day that a hostile invasion of Canada is coming…

Oh, and today is the 118th anniversary of Susan B. Anthony and about a hundred other suffragists came to President Arthur demanding to vote.

Anyway, I was browsing through the US marijuana laws and I noticed that it's been long-since decriminalized in many states. In Maine smoking pot is just a $200 ticket, with no criminal charges involved. In Ohio it's also decriminalized and the ticket is a maximum of $100. But then at the same time, there are those insane federal laws that overlap the state laws…

Some people have expressed concern that it's unethical for me to allow companies like SuicideGirls and CharmClub because they are unethical corporate entities that exploit the girls in their photos. I'm sure there's an air of truth to that, but who's taking advantage of who in porn is a nebulous thing, and it's old news because bme/HARD has had “Pierced Pornstars” since day zero.

My bigger concern is the “selling out” accusation. It's not really advertising because I'm being paid in photos, but it certainly represents at least a temporary unofficial partnership with a corporate entity. Is it wrong for me to accept submissions from sites like these assuming I feel that the images are worth posting?

Personally I added the photos because I thought they were hot, and because I thought people would enjoy them. Current members would be pleased, and it might bring in a few new members as well. Anyway, vote in the poll if it makes a difference to you.

Oh, and those of you who are wondering — the BME Porn-o-rama thing is still on. I'm sorry I haven't got a chance yet to reply to most of you, but it's in my shortlist. For those that are just seeing this for the first time, this is about producing adult videos and photos (like those discussed above) in-house, thereby alleviating these concerns. If you want to take part (I'm looking for girls or couples of all deviations, but I've already got too many single guys I think), drop us a line at pornstars@bmezine.com.

So I'm listening to the radio earlier this morning and the DJs are talking about the new rules being considered requiring senior citizens to be retested regularly for their driver's license. Overall they were pretty respectful, until they got into talking about how “these people got their licenses when the road conditions were really different — they can't be expected to understand how to interpret modern highways!” (Caveman lawyer anyone?) Then it moved into complaining about immigrants — “How can they possibly learn to drive a car when all they've ever seen is a Yak cart? At best they can drive a wagon pulled by an armadillo at five miles an hour!”

I was pretty shocked.

Then the white woman DJ started whining that she has to take the same test that a kid has to take… She thought they should have a “quick” test for white adults. Insane. Obviously a person's age (at either end of the scale) and ethnicity is irrelevant — there's a standard test that determines whether a person can drive that should not be biased. If you want to retest seniors, retest across the board. Make everyone take a small test every five years. If they score low, make them come back in a year. If they fail, institute a “clean up” program to make sure they're driving safely.

It's not that hard, and it needs no mention of race or age.

From here on, it's going to turn into blah, blah, blah… I feel like rambling.

Not that anyone cares about deaths that happen outside of their own borders — we all expect the world to cry with us, but don't you expect us to cry for them in return! — but goddamn is it getting unpleasant in Gujarat… Why do people even bother with this crap? Sure, if your faith declares another religion is evil petition against it and do what you can to save people from it's clutches… But burning their babies seems a little extreme! It's not as if I have the head of Steve Haworth on a stake in my backyard over the CoBM debacle.

Anyway, as much as I'm horrified by the events, what interests me more is American response to foreign terrorism. America expects the entire world to rally behind it after it is attacked, and even goes so far as to declare any country that doesn't evil. I wonder — will America rally behind India? Somehow I doubt it.

The economics of the attack are interesting to start looking at now too. A couple people have emailed me to say, “Well, at least we proved that terrorism doesn't work.” Hmm…. Ok, let's look at this — almost all the high-ups who orchestrated the attack are uncaptured, and will probably continue to remain free. Using an estimated $200,000 investment they killed three thousand people (in trade for a very small number of their own “troops”), have forced the US military to blow $30,000,000,000 (30 billion), did enormous damage to the US economy (I've seen people claim trillion-dollar figures), plus had a huge destabilizing effect on the politics of the US both internally and internationally, and have brought world-wide attention to the issues they wanted addressed. They WON. Plain and simple. They won this battle.

On an economic level, and on every functional measurable level, these attacks have proved both that terrorism works, and, more worryingly, that America is a very easy target. It's a simple fact that it is impossible to get rid of all fanatics. Sure, maybe given enough time and money they can eliminate Al Qaeda. I doubt it, and I suspect this hunt will just make Al Qaeda bigger… But more to the point, we'll never get them all. Which means that it is a guarantee that there will be more attacks as long as the US — and the West in general — continues along this path.

We need to make America a non-target. It's not as if people are blowing up buildings in Denmark. Denmark is a very advanced Western country, and a real nice place to live… and there are no crazies crashing planes into their cities… Why?

The West isn't a target of terrorism because a bunch of Muslims want to take our land, or because they object to our way of life. I'm sure they find our way of life deeply offensive, but that is not what caused the attack. The attacks were caused by one thing alone: objection to US foreign policy and perceived US attacks on the Arabic Middle East. So… If you want to minimize the possibility of attacks, what do you do? On top of radically reconsidering foreign policy, here is what I'd do if I was Bush:

Major scaleback of the military. Eliminate general troops altogether and have specialized strike forces only. Cannon fodder is a thing of the past, and is an easy target for guerilla forces.

Major scaleback of small weapons with a move to large nuclear deterrant weaponry. Reinstate a nuclear program to ensure we have scientists who understand these bombs.

A heavy push toward responsible energy independance. Strong push to install large solar and wind and alternative power arrays. America should never have to rely on its enemies for fuel or food or any other essential resources.

Shift the public concept of “AMERICAN” to mean strength through multi-culturalism, and open up the borders more to strengthen the workforce and economy.

Since the military is scaled back, without raising taxes the government would now be able to offer free universal healthcare (including glasses and dentistry, everything but elective surgery), and free universal education (right up through university).

Make a very hard push for space research. If China beats America into space, it is China that will rule this millenium, not America.

Include world history and world politics in the public education system. Allow foreign television easier access to US airwaves. Create a well educated, well cultures, and aware populace.

Anyway, I could go on and on. I don't think that anything I've mentioned above is a big leap, nor do I think it would be particularly difficult to implement. And the end result would be an America the whole world could look up to. Of course, as long as the American population doesn't get to determine who their leader is, and as long as the government works for big business and the upper class, none of these things will ever happen… They're far to empowering.

Capitalism, and the US government by extension, is a pyramid scheme. That is, for them to stay rich, and for them to stay in power, they have to keep you poor and weak. I don't know why the average person can't see that…

OK, the experience engine is working NOW. Sorry about the file access errors. I've got the VCR all fixed now too — it was nothing to fix, the little arm that I've highlighted in yellow in the pictures below had fallen off its switch. So now it's time to do some capturing…